Desperate passengers jumped from burning balloon

LUXOR: Burning passengers flung themselves from a hot-air balloon basket shortly before it exploded in flames over Luxor in Egypt on Tuesday, witnesses said.

Nineteen tourists died in the disaster, including Yvonne Rennie, from Perth, Scotland, and Joe Bampton and Suzanna Gyetvai, from London.

Mrs Rennie's husband, Michael, a construction firm manager, was the only passenger who survived. He was flown to Cairo's Nasser Institute Hospital with the pilot, Mohmin Murad, who suffered 70 per cent burns.

Nine of the dead were from Hong Kong, the others were Japanese, French, Egyptian and Hungarian, local authorities said.

Egypt's civil authorities ordered an inquiry amid claims by tourism officials that inspection standards had lapsed since the revolution two years ago.

Witnesses said that as the balloon came in to land, a sudden jet from a dislodged gas pipe set light to the wicker cradle, and within seconds it was soaring back into the air.

They said passengers, one a pregnant woman and some already on fire, desperately jumped to escape the flames. Smoke welled up around the balloon, gradually enveloping it, before it collapsed and fell.

It landed in a field, where its remaining hydrogen canisters exploded, ending any hope of survival for those inside.

''There was a small part of the cradle that had caught on fire,'' said Abubakr Mohammed Ezz, the pilot of another balloon still in the sky at the time. ''We saw the pilot jump out, and then one of the passengers. Then because of the lower weight, the balloon went up out of control. Many of the passengers tried to save their lives. They threw themselves out from 1000 feet [305 metres].''

A farmer, Yousef Abdel-Hamid, said: ''Some passengers were jumping from the balloon while it was moving, still on fire.

''Local residents ran to the sounds of screaming and helped the rescue teams who found the bodies fallen in the fields. We found about eight people who jumped out of the balloon.''

A driver for Sky Cruise, the company that owned the crashed balloon, said it had taken off as normal. He and the other drivers followed its route to where it was supposed to land but, as it came within about five metres of the ground, it got into trouble.

The Ministry of Aviation said the balloon had been inspected in recent weeks.

Telegraph, London

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